U.S. Pat. No. 5,493,128 discloses a receiving unit for X-ray cassettes in a cassette handling apparatus, the unit being suitable for the transport of vertically positioned cassettes of different formats. The device substantially has a part, configured as a separating mechanism, with a number of slots into which the cassettes are loaded. By means of a part which can be lifted and lowered vertically and moved horizontally forward in steps, and which has a number of slots that corresponds to the number of slots in the separating mechanism, the cassettes are transported to a transfer mechanism which transfers them into a reading and erasing unit.
Because the width of the loading slot only slightly exceeds the thickness of an X-ray cassette, precise vertical loading of X-ray cassettes into the slot is usually associated with a laborious threading-in process, which becomes the more difficult, the larger the X-ray cassette formats that are selected. This transport device is, moreover, of complex physical construction and, because of the large number of moving parts whose movements must be precisely adjusted to one another, is also susceptible to malfunctions.